Somewhere Only We Know
by Insideavoice
Summary: Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? These days he can't be certain. Nothing is as it once was and sanity is slipping... of that, he is sure.
1. Prologue

**Summary: **Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Perhaps they're just one in the same. These days he can't be certain.

**Author's Note: So this idea has been rattling around my brain for quite some time now. I'll admit, the basic idea isn't very original (…saw some people talking about it on tumblr…)**

**But yeah, so I really find the psychology of it all, particularly the study of mental disorders and the brain and perceptions, absolutely fascinating. **

**Basically this story idea stems from earlier fan-internet speculation and my own little twists (which I am sooooper dooper excited for), and mostly from the half a semester I've started of general psychology.**

**So clearly I am no expert on the subject. No siree, not at allll.**

**Okay, okay, but enough chit chat.**

**Lyrics credit for this teeny tiny chapter goes to Queen's _Bohemian Rhapsody._ Because it's perfectly cliché n yeah.**

**You + Review = My Extreme Adoration And Utter Appreciation **

_Any way the wind blows_

He sees her on the eve of the anniversary of her death, dressed in white, mud blotting the hem of her ghostly tatters. But when he blinks, she's gone in a flash. In the next instant, he can feel her air raining on his neck.

"Julia!" he calls out, his voice ringing foreign and unfamiliar, trembling like her shallow, easy breath in his ear.

It's almost midnight, though he remains paralyzed in his car—the ominous, obscene hearse, sitting idly in his parents' driveway. His hands lay frozen in midair, halfway between jamming the key in the ignition and bringing his hands to rest on the steering wheel.

He knows not how he got there and wonders vaguely for why. Vain and rueful, his voice is now but a whisper.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

Her sigh echoes in the dark, her breath tickling his ear. He can feel it tugging, hovering, drifting through the air, swirling up and trailing around his earlobe, until at last swarming against the metal piercing his skin.

"Eli—" The wind whispers, answering his question with another. "Why must you ruin everything?"

_Anyone can see  
>Nothing really matters<br>Nothing really matters…  
>Anyway the wind blows<em>


	2. Try To Make Sense of What Little Remains

**A/N: Lyrics credit to _Breakeven_ by the Script.**

**Your thoughts are kindly appreciated.**

**Enjoy, please?**

_I'm still alive but I'm barely breathing  
>Just pray to a God that I don't believe in <em>

It's four AM on April twenty-second by the time he somehow manages to bring his hands to the wheel. He's almost certain he'd see clearer if he only shut his eyes. But he doesn't. He can't. He shouldn't. He won't. Julia hasn't returned but he's pretty positive that if he were to close them, her tattered white dress with those dark, probing eyes out of her gaunt face would be all he'd ever hope to see.

He dares not blink or think and barely even breathes. He hardly knows where he's going but when he gets there, his feet guide him out of the car and lead him to that one lonely patch of moonlit grass beneath her bedroom window.

Pacing, he tugs tightly at his hair, hoping that the pull of it will be enough to kick start his brain. To miraculously know the right words to say. How to begin to even convey them. Abruptly, he comes to a halt on the lawn. He realizes he's looking for some divine intervention here. For what feels like the first time in his seventeen years, he wishes he had something to believe in, something bigger than himself. That envious steadfast faith in some power up there that has the incomprehensible ability to make this world better. Alright. Okay, even.

But he knows he can't let himself entertain such a notion, that kind of false hope. So instead of waiting to be struck by an act of God, his hands take the initiative and the search the ground, enclosing upon a smooth, round stone. Turning it over and over in his hands, his breath comes fast. He must do something to make her see. He must act or, on pain of death, he feels sure he will die of regret.

The stone hits her bedroom window with a gentle _thwack _while he waits in anxious anticipation for some movement from within. A light comes on. The curtains sway until her face appears. Squinting, her hands push hair out of sleepy eyes. When they adjust though, they narrow.

He's waiting on baited breath for her to speak. His brain has yet to kick start the necessary words for this exchange. There's a solid moment that feels like one deplorable hour before she mutters into the wind.

"Eli—" The voice pleads, strained, equal parts reluctance, despondence. "Just give me a minute." And with that, her face disappears, making him fear he's lost her for good.

But then she's outside, hugging her sweater to herself as she comes to him, standing stock still on that moonlit edge of grass. His brain remains tongue tied now that he's finally in her presence. Now it seems her patience has worn thin.

"What are you doing here, Eli?"

"I—I had to see you, Clare. I couldn't leave things…like that."

"Eli," she murmurs tiredly. She's shaking her head now.

At his side, his hands move restlessly, clenching and unclenching the ends of his jacket's sleeves. As helpless as ever. He shakes his head to and fro.

"We just need some space…"

The words he's hearing don't make any sense.

"—some time apart—"

His stomach constricts, ostensibly tying, retying, tightening knots.

"—I really think it's for the best—"

He's going to be sick.

"—we can't go on like this—"

This isn't real.

"—I _can__'__t_—"

This can't be real.

"—not anymore."

His hands return to his hair, mercilessly tugging, pulling, tearing. This isn't happening. This can't be real.

_Falling to pieces…I'm falling to pieces  
>'Cause when a heart breaks, no it don't break even<em>

But the words, they keep coming. They bend and twist, distorting her voice, making it tear-stained, saying things he never thought he'd ever hear her say.

She just sounds so sad. Her eyes are exhausted. "I wish that we could… but…" Helplessly, her shoulders shrug and sag. Her mouth keeps moving and he has to shake his head several times before he realizes what she's telling him.

"_You're suffocating me."_

Her hands throw up in the air. The words twist and coil, a snake encompassing his all too vulnerable brain. "The intensity…it's overwhelming…" The sound tugs, pinches and constricts his brain, commencing the painful contraction he feels in his heart.

This is surreal. This is a nightmare. This can't be real.

But still, it persists. The wind shifts as her voice reaches new heights. All too quickly, he recognizes the desperation in it. "I can't take it." She's almost doubled over in front of him. "I can't _breathe.__"_

_I can't._

_I'm sorry._

_I can't._

_I'm sorry._

_I'm sorry._

_I can't._

He's fading fast. She's left him now, went back inside, wiping away tears. She's left him now, all alone on that one lonely patch of moonlit grass. Slowly, he backs away, opening his car door with more care than necessary—too much, that was the problem, really, that was always his problem— and sits down in the driver's seat noiselessly. His key reaches the ignition and all he hears are those words. Constricting, coiling, cutting.

_You're suffocating me._

She says she _can__'__t_ now. She lied. She lied. She lied. She said she'd never leave.

He brings his head down to the steering wheel, a resting place for his forehead. His hands return to his hair, mercilessly tugging, pulling, tearing. This isn't happening. This can't be real.

_Falling to pieces…  
>Trying to make sense of what little remains…<br>'cause when a heart breaks, no it don't break even  
>Even, no<em>


	3. Curse Of Having Too Much Time To Think

**Author****'****s ****note: ****Okay ****yeah, ****as ****I ****went ****back ****to ****edit ****this ****chapter, ****I ****realized ****just ****how ****morbid ****it ****sounded. ****And ****for ****that, ****I ****apologize. ****This ****is ****a ****bit ****of ****a ****shorter ****update ****but ****a ****lot ****goes ****down. ****I ****hope ****it****'****s ****not ****too ****confusing.**

**I ****also ****feel ****like ****I ****should ****apologize ****for ****the ****way ****I ****talk ****about ****a ****certain ****mental ****disorder ****in ****this ****chapter**** — ****or ****rather, ****the ****way ****Eli ****thinks ****about ****it. ****I****'****m ****not ****really ****very ****informed ****about ****this ****particular ****disorder **_**at **__**all**_**, ****although, ****come ****to ****think ****of ****it, ****neither ****is ****Eli ****(obviously?).**

**So ****I****'****m ****sorry ****if ****I ****was ****inaccurate ****or ****offensive ****in ****any****way. ****I****'****m ****no ****expert, ****just ****a ****seemingly ****average ****person ****with ****internet ****connection.**

Lyrics credit goes out to Mayday Parade's _The __Memory_

**Annnnnnd ****THANK****YOU ****thank ****you ****for ****reading ****despite ****this ****obnoxiously ****long ****author****'****s ****note.**

**You're wonderful.**

_Walk __away__  
><em>_I'm __barely __breathing __a__s __I'm __lying __on __the __floor__  
><em>_Take __my __heart __as __you're __leaving__  
><em>_I __don't __need __it __anymore_

Up and down dark dank streets, he drives much too fast. The flickering streetlights cast an eerie glow on the passing pavement. Not that he pays it any mind. His eyes see the road only briefly while his brain invokes the image of her face, twisting, turning. Fiercely beautiful in his mind's eye despite the distortion.

As his hands grip the wheel, he watches her lips form words, words he still has trouble believing.

_This is the curse of having too much time to think about it_

He tries to tell himself it was only a memory – her face and those words – but that does nothing to slow his breathing. She's left, she's gone, she's abandoned him. She is but a memory. The memory forever slipping through his grasp, falling between his clumsy fingers until all that's left in his outstretched hand is his own empty shell of a heart.

He drives and drives and drives. He drives to escape.

Nothing seems quite real, quite right. Not the rushing pavement, not his clenched clammy grip on the wheel and certainly not Clare. At least, not the Clare he saw tonight – this morning? He doesn't know. He tries not to care. Only drives.

Drives to escape – this mess, this life. He feels as if he's stopped living, his body in slow motion while the flash of night and streetlights pass on the road, the car speeding ahead.

Vaguely, he recalls, oh – what was it called again? That theory, that extremely rare condition where one believes there is a part of him or her that no longer exists?

Sometimes, one thinks his or her heart is missing, vanished...

Sometimes it is the brain…

Still other times, they believe they have died, lost their souls.

He dimly remembers watching one of those late night crime shows with CeCe however long ago. Possibly a lifetime.

_Now __spring __has __brought __the __rain__  
><em>_But __I __still __see __your __face__  
><em>

Cotard. Walking Corpse Syndrome.

The killer had the Cotard delusion. He could not recognize himself in the mirror. Consequently, he ceased to exist.

Eli's foot lies further on the gas. What would it be like to be unfamiliar with all of this? To watch life from a safe, secure distance?

To no longer recognize himself?

Right now, he just wants to erase everything. The meeting, the smiling, the laughing, the draining, the slipping, the driving, the grasping, the crying. All of it. He just wants it gone – obliterated – over – finished – done –

The car lurches. He cannot fathom how his hands manage to turn the wheel in time, how his foot miraculously hits the brake. In an instant, he sees a distant figure cross the street up ahead. The individual walks at a casual pace not typically associated with dark nights on the highway. His headlights illuminate the face. It is a girl, unfamiliar and previously unknown to him, wisps of hair blowing haphazardly around her. By the time he swerves to miss her, she is gone.

His car in the guardrail, airbags deflate. He knows he's not dead for all the confusion and pain he has in store. But he certainly doesn't feel alive.

_I __cannot __escape __the __past__, __c__reeping __up __inside__  
><em>_Reminding __me __that __I __c__an __never __bring __you __back_

Cotard? The rearview mirror has a crack down the center, a parallel image, he can feel, of his heart. But no. He sees. He knows. There he is in the broken mirror. Bloodied, ugly, frenzied, damaged. Eli in ruins.

He yearns for the apathy, the disconnection, the escape. His hands sink into wet, matted hair. There is a sobbing, ugly awful sound screaming in the hearse. His eyes cut a glance to the shattered mirror. His mouth is open, wide in horror. He finds he cannot close it.

This scene, he's played it before, outside the car on this night an entire year ago today. This is the highway. The very same highway where he watched her die.

His fingers clench wet, bloodied strands of hair. They tug and they pull and they tear. How could he not have noticed before that he'd come crawling back to Julia's deathbed? Her concrete grave?

No No No.

He was here, he was back.

And there come the sirens, the flashing blue and red lights, closer, nearer, here, prying open his car door, saying words, something he cannot comprehend.

Out of the corner of his eye, a figure emerges. A girl, wisps of hair blowing haphazardly around her. She paces on the other side of the ambulance. Her glasses fog up in the cool night air.

With effort, he blinks.

She is gone. And all is black.

_Someone __help __me__  
><em>_because __the __memory __c__onvinced __itself __to __tear __me __apart__  
>a<em>_nd __it's __gonna __succeed __before __long_


	4. May Never Be Replaced No, Never The Same

**Author's note: So. This story is turning out to be a lot darker than I first intended. Just so you know, I don't plan for future chapters to be quite this depressing.**

**Also, I hope the flashbacks aren't too confusing. They're meant to jump around and be a bit jumbled. It is Eli's head after all.**

**Lyrics are taken from Mayday Parade's _Three Cheers for Five Years_**

**I'd love to hear some thoughts. The good, the bad, and yes, even the ugly would be very much appreciated! Muchas gracias.**

_Inside, I hope you know, I'm dying  
>with my heart beside me<br>in shattered pieces that  
>may never be replaced<br>_

His world goes in and out of focus. The sight of shattered glass on pavement, the taste of blood, the ambulance, the EMTs. These are moments he feels that this is it. His final atonement, his penance. Sweet justice Swerving, missing, falling, crashing. His last act. Whoever it was, whoever it had been, at least he didn't take her down with him. Such had happened too many times. Too many times before.

His world goes in and out of focus. The stinging smell of antiseptic in the air, the rush of squeaky wheels on tile floors, the hasty hushed voices, something beeping in the background.

He has a flash of Julia in a room with white walls, swimming in that hospital gown – drowning. Forever sleeping.

_Rain on pavement. Rain on the front porch. Rain dripping down her face before him now. Rain in her bloodshot eyes, rain on his father's borrowed blue shirt as she comes to him, clinging to his chest, his arms, his body._

"_I can't," she says. "She doesn't understand." Clinging tighter, begging for relief. "She'll be the death of me."_

"_Don't say that, Jules." He holds her close, kisses her forehead, aspiring to redefine the role of Prince Charming, wearing his father's dirty polo, saving young Cinderella from her home. "Don't say that. I'm here. It's okay."_

_Now if he could only save them from themselves._

_Escape to the bedroom. Tangled hands upstairs. Upstairs, tangled words in sheets, in whispers clear and murmured._

_I love you._

_Don't leave._

_Never._

_A question – Never?_

_No. Not ever._

_An answer – I love you._

_A tangle of hair, a tangle of knots – tangled bed sheets._

_This is a dream, sleeping beside her. _

_He's never waking up. _

_Why on earth would he wake up?_

_A flash of an image. She's sealed in a casket._

_The sun is blinding, mocking. Briefly he reflects that she would have wanted it this way: happy sunshine for her funeral goers. But he stumbles. When did he ever _really_ know what she wanted anyway?_

_His hands ball in fists seeing her put in the ground. He bites his lip. He bites his tongue to keep from screaming – don't you know there are times she's still afraid of the dark – the unknown, the black of night?_

_But he bites his lip. He bites his tongue, keeps right on crying._

_Never again will she see the light of day._

A thought, random and heartbreaking in the chaos. Would Clare come to his funeral?

Would she cry?

Would he want her to?

He knows not.

His world swims in and out of focus.

He thinks he sees her now, shaking, tentatively drawing near. As if afraid to come any closer. He realizes now he's in a room with four white walls. There is a hospital bed, a cast on his arm, another on the opposite leg.

"Eli." She shivers.

He blinks, "Clare," breathing full of wonderment. "You came."

She's crying, she came, she cares. She would come to his funeral after all.

"You—" Her voice, just as surprised. "You knew I would come." A simple statement phrased as a question.

His heart soars, gaining confidence. She's crying. She came. She cares. Of their own accord, his lips form a smile, a happy relieved, childish smile. "Of course you came," he answers, a reassurance to the both of them. He says it again, this time with greater dazed conviction: "Of course you came."

But she's backing away now. "You crashed Morty…on purpose." Another phrase stated as if in question. Her eyes seem horrified. Afraid.

He doesn't understand. Crash his car on purpose? But there was a girl. A girl in the road. She took off in the night. He can't be sure where she is now.

But on _purpose?_ Deliberately wreck his car? Perhaps the thought crossed his mind once the split second before – or after maybe? Clare would come to his aid… She'd come to his funeral…

But crash his car on _purpose?_

No.

No, it wasn't like that.

She's backing away still, hugging the doorframe, almost gone.

"I—" He's reaching for her, for a hand. She won't allow it.

"Eli," she says, a question, an answer in and of itself for the hurt she feels. The pain he's inflicting on her without meaning, without trying.

"Clare, no, no. Clare, you don't understand – I wouldn't – I couldn't – never – " he struggles. His tongue is clumsy. Her eyes are glassy. "I love you."

Silence.

She's crying. "I love you." She murmurs, "But I can't anymore."

And now she's crying.

She's walking.

She's leaving.

_Clare._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_Come back._

_You said you'd never leave._

She cried.

She lied.

She disappeared.

In the end, they all leave.

_In shattered pieces that may never be replaced  
>And if I die right now<br>you'd never be the same_


	5. Suffering the Atrocity of Sunsets

**A/N: With the exception of flashbacks, the words in _italics_ are lines from Sylvia Plath's _Elm._ I hoping the difference between the two will be clear.**

**Also, somehow I didn't realize before how common the title "Somewhere Only We Know" is for fanfics. It made me feel largely unoriginal. I contemplated changing it, but… I think it's going to just stay. I think it's pretty fitting for this story, even though it's going in a completely different direction than those other fics…  
>I just wanted to throw that out there so I wouldn't be judged so harshly for the unoriginal title.<strong>

**Enjoy, please?**

He is on suicide watch. Nurse scurries in and out. CeCe reaches for his hand constantly. With sad gray eyes, Bullfrog can only look at him. Their tears have yet to dry.

They think he crashed his car with intent to kill. They think it was deliberate, premeditated. They think he's suicidal.

He could almost laugh – the irony kills him – only after the fact does he wish his heart would do them all a favor and just stop beating.

Time is relative yet the concept confounds him. Hospital walls catalyze the memories.

Nurse knocks on the door, he believes a flash of brown curls framing Clare's face blazes before him, aggrieved, willing for an escape. Nurse leaves then, too.

The machines hum. He hears Julia's voice, soft and whispered in the dark…

* * *

><p><em>She says, "Daddy's working late at the hospital…Lucky you."<em>

_Her eyes glow in the night, bloodshot, her hair, wild and riotous in the wind. _

_He looks up to sky, sees a flash of lightning overhead before quickly ushering her inside the house. He's just grateful Cece and Bullfrog are busy at some reunion concert tonight. Not that they would pass much judgment here anyways…but then, he'd feel the need to explain it all, nevertheless. And he's not sure he has words to suffice…_

* * *

><p>He sees Doctor's pen, slipped in the breast pocket of his white coat. He remembers. Glimpses of <em>Stalker Angel<em> and Dawes and Romeo and Juliet and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

_"Sylvia Plath killed herself."_

No, he thinks. No No No. Psychologically, the roles reversed. Clare is Ted. _She_ is the one who left. He is Plath. He is – this. He is emotional and ambitious and dramatic, too.

Sylvia never did survive Ted's abandonment, at least, not for long.

As his eyes linger on the blank hospital wall before him, Adam visits. He hears Nurse refer to him as "the boy with the beanie," just outside the hall. He hears the smallest of laughs that sounds like Adam. How long it seems…

Pulling the chair in the corner closer to the bedside, beanie boy radiates acute anxiety. His eyes dart and shift from the cast, to the sling, to the air.

But Adam is brave, braver than he, Eli thinks for the briefest of seconds.

His eyes still linger on the opposite wall and his thoughts on the Plath/Hughes relationship.

He coughs, and as the cough tumbles out, as does a voice. It sounds nothing like his own, like it hasn't been used in ages.

"I am Sylvia," it says.

"Huh?" He sees beanie boy's brows flick up – in amusement? concern?

"Dead and gone," it says, albeit hoarsely. "The past…this…this aftermath… 'I know the bottom, she says'…it's just like Sylvia Plath."

Recognition. "Edwards is your Ted Hughes."

Mmhmm. Uh huh. A nod. Who else would she be in this scenario?

"Well," beanie boy sits back in his chair, one hand moving to scratch the back of his neck. Eli eyes him from the periphery, ears perked. To flee disastrous nostalgia, if only.

"There's this theory," the boy finally says before pausing, tilting his head, shrugging his shoulders.

Eli desperately wants him to keep talking. He tries so hard to comply, attempts to rearrange his face with a more suitable expression. It doesn't last long.

Adam plows ahead nonetheless.

"…so Plath –" another shake of the head –

_I know the bottom, she says_

– until finally, a question: "Did you know she came close to committing suicide just a few years before she met Hughes?"

_I know the bottom_

Eli did. He doesn't answer. There's something caught in his throat. Maybe the look of his friend's eyes – the hesitance, the stumble over _"suicide."_ He believes just like Bullfrog and CeCe…Adam believes it too…

_It is what you fear…_

"Right –" Eli must blink to focus. Adam's face looms adamant, warming up to the story.

_I do not fear it…_

"So yeah. There was one time where she took her mom's sleeping pills and her brother… I think it was the brother…"

…_I have been there _

"…who found her in their mother's basement after, like, days, moaning and carrying on. But…"

He drifts. No longer seeing the opposite wall but another scene entirely.

_It is what you fear_

"…and then she meets Hughes. And they're together for like – what? – maybe sevenish years?" Adam's hand stops scratching and gesticulates about instead, waving in his general direction.

_the bottom…I have been there _

Eli forces a nod. His mind is sponge. Words hypnotize.

_I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the root_

The scene on the wall plays out. Adam's voice rushes and swarms. Eli must force himself to blink.

"And yeah, Ted leaves her for another woman and it was cruel and she stuck her head in an oven the next winter, _but when you think about it,_ there was this whole ten year span of time between her failed suicide attempt and, well, her 'successful' one –"

_I let her go_

He air quotes, an evident difference of opinion over the connotations of _success_.

_I let her go_

"And I just think that Hughes guy was kind of important for those ten years. Even if he did really fuck up that last year."

A nod.

_How your bad dreams possess and endow me_

Fucked, indeed. How does one ever go back from that? How do you pick up your feet and move forward?

_bad dreams_

He hasn't left the room in days.

_bad dreams_

His mind is sponge. He turns the theory over and over in his lame hand. The words hypnotize.

_I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me_

The voice tumbles out of its own accord. Again. He doesn't know why this keeps happening lately.

"I didn't stick my head in an oven, you know."

"I know."

"I'm not going to anytime soon."

_All day I feel its soft…_

A pause. He thinks there is a ghost of a smile on the other's face.

"I know that, Eli. We won't let you."

…_feathery turnings  
>its malignity<em>

His eyes drift. Nurse arrives, waving Adam out. She comes over, adjusts his IV. The world grows fuzzy, softer, and faintly endurable. Until it all begins again.

* * *

><p><em>Clouds pass and disperse<br>Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?  
><em>_Is it for such I agitate my heart?_

* * *

><p><em> She shakes, she quivers. He can feel her ache with unshed tears. "Daddy's working late," she says again, her eyes still red and glassy, her face in the shadow of the moonlight streaming through the living room window.<em>

_ He shuts the front door with both hands, as gently as he can. As if anything less would bring the rest of the world down around them._

_ He almost reaches for her, but he stops when she opens her mouth once more. She tries to speak, her lips forming words he cannot discern, until finally, she whispers. She breathes dully. "Lucky…you."_

_ And then she's in his arms and it's the same story at home but it doesn't matter because he's here. _He is here _and her eyes flood over and he's the one wiping them away. He's the one holding her, picking up the pieces, reassuring, _there.

_ And she's the one begging, imploring relief, loving him and drawing him closer, _letting_ him love her because these days it feels like he might just be the only one. _

_And he knows it, too._

_ It scared him at first. But now. Now, he just wants to make her whole again._

* * *

><p><em>I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root<em>

* * *

><p><em>And so they escape to his room. Their tangled hands upstairs. Upstairs, tangled words in sheets, in whispers clear and murmured.<em>

_A tangle of hair, a tangle of knots – tangled clothes stray the floor._

_They're ticking time bombs but he thinks he can hold off the inevitable. He thinks he can be her hero. He thinks he can make her forget, make her feel whole._

_But when it's over, when all that's left is her heavy head on his bare shoulder, knotted by his side in bed, her tears have yet to dry._

_Her mind wanders farther and he can't stop her. She's making herself a mess. She murmurs to herself. "I'm sorry," she says._

_His fingers run circles through her hair. What does she possibly have to be sorry for?_

"_I…I shouldn't…We…we shouldn't have…I just…"_

_He brings a finger to her chin, brings her eyes to his. "I'm not sorry," he tells her. "Not in the least."_

_She bites her lip._

_She says, "I love you."_

_She says, "I'm selfish."_

_She says, "Lately, I feel misplaced."_

_And then she asks, "What is 'family?'" while his heart breaks._

_He tells her she is everything. He tells her she is home._

_The trouble is she can't make herself believe it's true._

* * *

><p><em>I am inhabited by a cry<br>Nightly it flaps out  
><em>_Looking, with its hooks, for something to love_

* * *

><p>It happens all before he has the time to blink or think, or say goodbye to his friend. In the morning, he will wish he'd said <em>thank you<em>. But he knows not to whom.

He thinks the voice will take care of it later.

* * *

><p><em>I know the bottom... I know it with my great tap root<em>

He never could quite understand it. And now he's slowly seeing, neither did Clare. Adam and CeCe and Bullfrog, they don't have a prayer.

Julia's voice tickles, ironic in his ear.

"Lucky..._you.__"_

* * *

><p><em>Is it the sea you hear in me,<br>Its dissatisfactions?  
>Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?<em>

* * *

><p>And so he surrenders to sleep. But the relief – it's little.<p> 


End file.
